Mother-daughter fiction of the best flawed sort where, in the midst of cliché, a genuinely admirable amount of truth shines...
Divorced mother, living in barely-there fashion, gets knocked for a loop when real life comes crashing in.
It’s hard to resist a good tale of emotional thaw about a closed-down soul who’s reawakened to the messy highs and lows of the world outside some carefully structured sanctum. This helps explain the success of Juska’s second outing (after Getting Over Robert Wagner, 2002) but doesn’t completely cover it. Our frozen heroine is Charlotte, on the downhill side of her 40s and divorced for 15 years, living alone in a sterile New Jersey condo with strong-willed daughter Emily, in her early 20s and her mother’s exact opposite. At the start, Charlotte is a nightmarish control freak (with family money to support her) who has little to occupy her days and so spends them in a strict regimen of small tasks: cleaning, running errands, getting manicures, watching Jeopardy every night without fail. Given her neuroses, the departures of Emily (first for college, then for a house in New Hampshire that she shares with her black boyfriend Walter) and the earlier one of husband Joe (for Seattle and a more glamorous wife) leave her free to develop a truly unhealthy set of routines and worries. Juska’s portrait of her, though, is an exacting one and hews, however uncomfortably, close to the truth. Charlotte is every mother who wants nothing more than for her children to move back home, who secretly desires their misery in order to feel needed, and who takes every independent action by those same children as a rebuke of her values. There are neighborhoods full of Charlottes, and Juska’s skill in portraying this one is strong enough that her latest is a powerful success in spite of its tendency to melodrama: an unexpected pregnancy, a crisis over Walter’s race, far too many heart-to-heart discussions.
Mother-daughter fiction of the best flawed sort where, in the midst of cliché, a genuinely admirable amount of truth shines forth.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-9350-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Downtown Press/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
